Imagine being able to accurately predict where forest fires might strike — even in the most remote locations in the province — using freely accessible data from a NASA satellite.

This is the work of Quazi Hassan, a geomatics engineering associate professor in the University of Calgary's Schulich School of Engineering, whose NSERC funding has just been renewed.

“There are only so many weather stations in the province, so there are remote areas where we don’t get very much data,” says Hassan. “My idea is to use remote sensing to forecast where forest fires are likely to occur so we can mobilize resources and get to the areas earlier.”